Fyne Ales Jarl - Champion Beer of Glasgow

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Fyne Ales' Jarl beer was originally launched as a seasonal beer to an expectant audience at the brewery's beer festival in June 2010. Since then it has become one of the their biggest selling beers and has gained an ever growing legion of fans won over by the delicious fresh citrus fruitiness and thirst quenching bite in this 3.8% single hopped (citra) golden ale. It is a great beer and one of my tip top favourites.

It's not only myself that has sung it's praises and recognised the quality of this beer. It's won praise and plaudits, awards and acclaim most notably winning SIBA's overall Champion Beer of Scotland at the Scottish Real Ale Festival.

a heaving awards cabinet

The most recent award won by Fyne Ales for Jarl was 'Beer of the Year' as voted by the Glasgow Camra branch and as a member of that branch I headed up to Loch Fyne with 18 other hardy souls, enduring the horrid autumnal rain showers, to present the trophy to Tuggy, Wil and Charlie from the brewery.

It's a brewery I'm very familiar with, having been up there a handful of times before, and they always put on a tidy spread and a good range of beers. On this visit, we were treated to a trio of Fyne tastic beer soaked up with some barbequed beef sausages and burgers from the Fyne Ales estate that had been fattened up with the spent grain from the brewery.

Three beers available on our trip were Maverick, West Highland Black IPA and, of course, Jarl. I was in the mood for a Jarlfest and made this my beer of the day. I did dip my toe, metaphorically, into the other two beers but the thought of Jarl straight from the tap was too much of a temptation to resist.

There is something particularly lovely and pretty special about drinking from the brewery tap surrounded by boxes of hops, dozens of casks and hundreds of bottles of lovely beer. Beer always tastes better straight from the brewery tap. No question. 

a glass and a half of class - Fyne Ales Jarl

It was good to have a chat with brewer, Wil and production manager, Charlie. I discovered that plans are coming along well for their shiny new brewery that will triple capacity as Fyne Ales try to keep up with demand for their beers. I was very interested to hear from Wil that he intends 2012 to be a year for IPA's at the brewery with them producing up to a dozen over the coming year. Great news.

Finishing off the day, we made our ritual stop at the nearby Village Inn. More Fyne Ales beers were on, including a beer that I hadn't tried yet. I was about to pop my Fyne Ales Cherry Stout cherry. But, that's for another blog.

Thanks to Tim at Glasgow CAMRA for organising the trip.


Here's what other people think of Jarl, Champion Beer of Glasgow. The Beer Cast , Taste Sensations , The Beer Prole , I Might Have A Glass of Beer

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